Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show 2012: Tom Cannavan on the rise of new media

Tom Cannavan of Wine-pages.com

Scottish wine writer and broadcaster Tom Cannavan was one of the three international judges at this year’s Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show. He was one of the pioneers of wine on the Internet when he launched Wine-pages.com in 1995 and today his site has 450 000 unique users and 4.5 million page impressions a month. The site’s forum has 5 000 registered users of which 500 to 600 are active at any one time. “It’s the public talking about wine and it’s entirely self-policing. An interesting barometer,” he notes.

So why the continued scepticism of new media in many quarters of the international wine industry? “It’s a generational thing. Blogs and Twitter are being recognised more and more as a powerful medium,” he says.

Results of the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show will be live on this blog late in the afternoon of Wednesday 30 May.